The year 1968 was a time of rebellion across the US and the wider world. Tremendous demonstrations and rebellions shook American cities in opposition to the Vietnam War, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and demands to free Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party. Amidst this tumult, two athletes, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, captured the spirit of the times by raising their fists at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics after placing first and third in the 200-meter dash. 45 years later, Dr. John Carlos is still with us—but many of his contemporaries have passed on. Dr. John Carlos joins Edge of Sports for a look back on the lives of Jimmy Hines, Ralph Boston, Herb Douglas, Harry Belafonte, Tina Turner, and Jim Brown.
Elsewhere in this episode of Edge of Sports, Dr. Maria Veri, co-author of Gridiron Gourmet: Gender and Food at the Football Tailgate, joins for a discussion on the gender politics of tailgating culture. Dave Zirin also dives into the recently leaked details of a Professional Golfers’ Association merger with the Saudi Arabian LIV Golf tour.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino
Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Welcome to Edge of Sports, the TV show only on The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin, and this week we are talking to a legend: 1968 Olympic medalist. One of the two men who raised their black-gloved fists on the medal stand in Mexico City in a moment for the ages. The fastest humanitarian alive, Dr. John Carlos.
Also, I’ve got some choice words about the Professional Golfers Association Tour joyously selling out to its Saudi Arabia-run competitor, the LIV Tour.
And in our Ask a Sports Scholar segment, we talk to Dr. Maria Veri about a book she co-wrote with Rita Liberti called Gridiron Gourmet: Gender and Food at the Football Tailgate.
But first: a word of caution, if you will.
With Dr. John Carlos, we are going to be discussing loss. You see, Dr. Carlos was part of a generation that self-identified as being part of a Black athlete’s revolt. And in just the last several months, a heartbreaking number of the people who made up this revolt, people who were either athletes or artists that contributed to the struggle, have left us.
Maybe you’ve heard of all the people we’re going to discuss … Or maybe you haven’t. But they all meant something to Dr. John Carlos, and they all meant something to the history of sports. And we’re going to speak to him about all of these folks by phone right now.
Dr. Carlos, how are you?
John Carlos:
Real fine, David. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be talking to you today.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, this is a special show, because we’re about to pay tribute to some folks who’ve passed away. But first and foremost, how are you in this trying time?
John Carlos:
Oh, man. It is a sad situation for me, because so many of my friends in the work that I do in my social life and my sports life have moved on. So it’s a trying time for me right now.
Dave Zirin:
Well, let’s talk about some of the people who’ve passed. I just want to get your thoughts: maybe something about them that maybe we don’t know, and maybe raise up their names as they transition.
Let’s start with your fellow 1968 Olympian: the first person to run the 100 meters in under 10 seconds, the great Jimmy Hines. What can you tell us about Jimmy Hines?
John Carlos:
Well, I met Jimmy Hines. I was young, 21 year old. Jimmy was a young 20-year-old individual. We went to school in Texas. I went to East Texas State, he went to Texas Southern.
Jimmy was a very formidable young athlete. He had a tremendous amount of confidence in his ability. I didn’t know of Jimmy’s record back in high school. I found out later that he was undefeated all through his high school years, and just added on to his determination to be a winner.
Aside from that, he was always a nice guy, methodical about his competition. Aggressive, I might say; always wanted to be the head of the pack, so to speak. I enjoyed being with Jimmy. I enjoyed traveling with him. I enjoyed his competition.
And most of all, man, I enjoyed the fact that we were in the greatest Olympics of all time together.
Dave Zirin:
No doubt, no doubt. We also lost the oldest-living US Olympic medalist, a man who medaled at the 1948 Olympics. He just passed at the age of 101. What can you tell us about Mr. Herbert Douglas?
John Carlos:
Well, the great Herb Douglas; well, Mr. Douglas was a formidable young man, I might say, in his demise.
Mr. Douglas was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father was a blind individual. I think his father was the first one to have the guide dog. So Herb came up under the tutelage of individuals that couldn’t see him, but taught him so much. They taught him about character, taught him about responsibility, taught him about being aggressive towards learning as much as you can and solving the issues of society.
When I met Herb, Herb thought I was just a young, loud-mouth individual kid. And one day he had an opportunity to observe my loudness. I was stepping up for those individuals at the Olympic trials that were senior citizens such as Herb and Stan Wright and all the seniors that was involved in track and field … Dr. LeRoy Walker. They were all being disrespected, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen. So I turned up the volume to make sure that they showed and gave respect to those individuals.
Mr. Douglas took a note of that, and he got in touch with some people and said, “I’ve been looking all through the bushes for the diamond in the rough, or the needle in the haystack. And here he’s been before me all this time: in the eyes of John Carlos.”
From that point on, when we got together, we were good buddies. But even more, he was like a father figure and a mentor to me. I had a lot of time to sit back and observe Herb and get the knowledge from Herb. And at the same time, have an opportunity to see a man of his age and his stature to have such a physical element about them.
I remember one time Herb hit me in my gut. And at that time, he must’ve been about 95 years old. And a man that hits you that hard, with that much vigor at that age, you knew he was a special individual.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Well, you and I are going to toast Herb when you hit your 101.
John Carlos:
Absolutely.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. That moment, we’re going to pay some special tribute to Herb.
Also someone who passed away was someone who was a legend at three separate Olympics: 1960, 1964, and of course the greatest Olympics of all time, 1968 in Mexico City. I’m talking about Ralph Boston. What can you tell us about the late Ralph Boston?
John Carlos:
Well, before I get into Mr. Boston, you hit the word “legend.” I want you to know, and everyone out there’s listening, that each individual that we mentioned today is a living legend. And in my 78 years, I don’t recall any time we had a cluster of legends to die in such a short span of time.
Dave Zirin:
Never.
John Carlos:
So whoever the [inaudible 00:07:10] is, He must have a master plan to put all of them on the bus to come to Him at this particular time.
Ralph Boston: I met Ralph when I was a young kid in high school. I was working for the Puma Shoe Company. Ralph was up at Fordham University, getting ready to go to the Olympic trials over at Randall’s Island, New York. I didn’t know who he was; but I observed him, and he was looking in his bag for something. And I saw this disgust on his face, because whatever he was looking for wasn’t there.
So I took the initiative to approach him and asked him; I said, “Hey man, you lose something? You need something.”
He said to me, he said, “Man, I need a tape. I left my measuring tape.”
And I said to him, I said, “What do you need?”
He said, “Well, I need a hundred-foot tape.”
So we had a steel hundred-foot tape with the Puma Company. And I went to the Puma people and told them, I said, “I need a hundred-foot tape.”
They said, “Who?”
I said, “For that guy over there.”
“Oh, we can’t give him a tape, man. He’s Adidas.”
And I had to make them understand, at my young age, that it doesn’t matter the fact that he’s Adidas. It doesn’t matter the fact that he’s a Puma. What matters is that he’s one of the greatest athletes in our era. And if we can do anything to help him today in the long run, regardless which shoe it is; Puma, Adidas, whatever; he’s going to be in our corner to support us as we support him now.
That’s how Ralph and I became very good friends from that point on. It just grew, grew, and grew. When Ralph went down to the University of Tennessee and became the dean down there, he brought me and others down there to speak to the students down there to try and give them some insight as to what was going on in social life, what was going on in the athletic world. Ralph was just a wide-open guy to try and help society in any way he felt that he could.
Dave Zirin:
The next person is somebody who could have been a decathlete at the 1956 Olympics if he’d made that choice, but he chose otherwise. I’m of course talking about Jim Brown, someone we’ve spoken about on this show.
Now, before I ask you some of your reflections about Jim Brown, when I think of you and Jim Brown, I think of two people who really don’t like taking shit from other people. You and Jim, how was your relationship? Did you guys clash? Did you guys get along? What was it like with you and Jim Brown?
John Carlos:
No, we gelled. I understood Jim Brown. Like that guy wrote me one time when I told him about I love Jim Brown on the internet. And he brought up Jim Brown’s negative part of his life with this woman where he throw this woman off the balcony, this, that and the other.
I had to explain to the individual that Jim Brown is not a lone grain of sand. And the sport in which he participated in, banging their head, someone banging your head, you banging your head constantly, you become a very aggressive person.
And when you apply that aggressiveness, it doesn’t channel into saying, “Well, I can be aggressive because this is a man, or I can be aggressive because this is a child,” you’re just aggressive. And until you can learn to make that adjustment and hold back, you have to understand that these individuals are in a psychological realm. And at that particular time, people didn’t understand about the mental trauma or the head trauma that these individuals in that sport has taken.
So I told the guy, “Don’t ridicule Mr. Brown, because he’s done far better things than he’s did for this negative incident that you trying to put out today.”
Jim was always straightforward. He had his own mindset. Once he had his mind made, no one was going to change his mind, because he felt that he was right. And I find that Jim has always had a tendency to evaluate things that he did before he did it. I have respect for Jim of the utmost, because he never backed down from who he was. He never backed down in terms of speaking on the issues when it was necessary to speak.
When most individuals talked about gangs, in terms of gang activity, Jim was one of those individuals that rolled up his sleeves and went into the hood, went into the neighborhood to try and reach these young kids to make them see a better day. I always had respect for that, because many individuals sat back and talked the game, but never played the game.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Exactly. And we spoke about Jim Brown, all facets and dimensions of his life on a previous episode here at Edge of Sports, but your words really do round it out for us.
Just a couple more names for you. And it really is staggering: the amount of talent, cultural talent we’ve lost recently. The next name is Harry Belafonte. I would love your thoughts about Harry Belafonte, his connection to the movement, and what he meant to you.
John Carlos:
Well, first of all, Harry Belafonte was built so magnificently, physically structured. Harry Belafonte could have been an athlete himself. He could have been a high jumper, he could have ran the 200, he could have ran the quarter.
Dave Zirin:
Wow.
John Carlos:
Or he could have been a boxer. But he chose to be in the entertainment field. He chose to commemorate his legacy, his history relative to him being Jamaican. So as a young individual growing up in Brooklyn, he decided that he would sing Calypso songs to bring Jamaica up to the forefront.
But yet still with all of that, he didn’t choose to be an individual that would point to himself and talk about what his accomplishments were. He was more concerned about the downtrodden individuals, those individuals that had so much to give to society, that never had the opportunity.
He fought for equality and justice and love and honor and respect for all individuals, particularly for Black people: because he was a Black man and he knew the plight of Black people. So you have to always give the respect to Harry Belafonte because he didn’t just talk the game, he walked the game. He didn’t just throw his messes out there.
When Harry was making money, he took his money and supported Dr. King in his civil rights activities as well. He marched with Martin Luther King. So it wasn’t about him being a star, as much as it was about us being stars as human beings.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. You just described Dr. John Carlos.
The last name; then I have one last question, and I’ll let you go. You’ve been so generous with your time. But I have to ask you about the person I think you and I would agree was Simply the Best: talking about Tina Turner. Your thoughts about the passing of the great Miss Tina Turner.
John Carlos:
Well, I know Tina had a rough life coming up, getting into show business. Show business in itself is a rough life. But then when you hook up with a guy that is like a chameleon, has changed through the beginning of her career with him until the time she was there to break away and become free. She’d get to use that metaphor: “Thank God, thank God, thank God. At last, I’m free at last.”
I remember one time my wife and I were down in South Carolina, and we were staying at a hotel. And this particular hotel, Tina was staying at the hotel too. I was always fascinated about Tina in terms of the message that she gave in her music. But I was even more fascinated about how active and how physical she was within her oratory relative to her music, the physical energy that she put into it. So I really wanted to meet her on a personal level.
I remember sitting in the lobby waiting for her, waiting for her to come down or come back from where she was. They snuck her in the back door. And I was so disappointed there. I sat there all that time and never really got a chance to have an opportunity to take a minute with her.
I remember going up to my room. And my wife looked at me and she said, “You look so dejected, you must have missed Tina. Tina must not have come in.”
And it’s funny, because my wife, in her young years, she almost became one of the Ikettes.
Dave Zirin:
[inaudible 00:15:12]
John Carlos:
So she knew Tina on a personal level as well.
But I always admired Tina Turner in terms of someone that say, so to speak, “I’m going to take chicken shit and turn it into chicken salad.” And that’s exactly what she did.
Dave Zirin:
A lesson for all of us.
John Carlos:
Right.
Dave Zirin:
So just to wrap up, just to wrap up, looking at the history you just laid out so clearly, from Herb Douglas in ’48 to yourself in ’68 to Colin Kaepernick today: as you reflect on this history, what do you think athletic protest accomplishes?
John Carlos:
Well, I think protest period accomplishes much. But the difference with athletics and just the standard protest and the fact that we are universal. When I say “we are universal,” whoever can you say is universal other than the President of the United States? They know him worldwide.
While athletics, those individuals that we mentioned are icons of a sport, and they’re recognized as well as that president on a level ground, on a worldwide level. So when they step up to speak on issues, people take note. They stop and listen to what these individuals have to say. And it gives them an opportunity to weigh things in their mind as to whether it’s right or whether it’s wrong; whether it should move forward or whether it should move back. But many individuals don’t realize that.
I always use the metaphor that there’s man-made icons and there’s God-given icons. The God-given icons is the ones that step forward and make the necessary statements that needs to be made, regardless of reprisal or fear or anything. They’re just going to do what they feel is the right thing to do to help this world in which we live.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Well, they accomplished so much. You are accomplishing, and have accomplished so much. Dr. Carlos, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports.
John Carlos:
Well, Dave, on the way out, man, let me just say, when individuals such as those leave, it pushes you up closer to the front pew. I think right now myself, as well as a few others, we’re in that front pew now. We are the seniors. We are the ones that’s going to lead the wagon train, so to speak.
And I would just hope that everybody would realize their responsibility, not merely to themselves, but to society as a whole to make this a better world. And right now, the situation that we in in society, with all the division going on from the ex-president on down, we have to do what we can do as athletes to bring some sort of clarity to what’s going on in our lives. Because so many people are taking their lives right now, killing other individuals right now, based on mental issues that they have, frustration that they have, confusion that they have.
And all individuals have gone on to music and have gone to sports to try and take the pressure off of them, to relieve them, to give them the opportunity to be free again. So as athletes, we have to be the spokesperson for society. Turn up the volume, I say.
Dave Zirin:
Well, I look forward to the decades that I certainly expect you to spend at the front of this wagon train. Dr. Carlos, thanks so much for joining us.
John Carlos:
Thank you for having me, Dave.
Dave Zirin:
All right. You’re the best.
John Carlos:
Much love to you and the family.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, much love to you and yours. You’re the best.
And now I’ve got some choice words about Saudi Arabia chowing down and digesting the willing meal that is the Professional Golfers Association Tour.
Okay, look, there was a time in the way distant past; let’s call it May; when the official position of the PGA Tour was that its competitor, the Saudi-backed golf tour known as LIV, was a scandalous, even-odious operation.
Referring to Saudi Arabia’s horrific human rights record, PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said just last year, “You’d have to be living under a rock to not understand the implications of involving yourself with the Saudis.” But Monahan’s strong comment is now just a reminder that pencils have erasers.
In news that was initially shocking; but upon reflection, really isn’t show shocking at all; the PGA Tour announced that it will permanently merge with the LIV Tour. As Monahan said, “The game of golf is better for what we’ve done today.”
Gee, does this mean that Monahan is now living under a rock? If anything, he has come out into the sunlight from beneath his rock, to say that he does understand the implications of involving himself with the Saudis. And those implications are wealth beyond his wildest dreams.
The Saudi Crown Prince, known as MBS, is promising to invest billions of petro dollars in this merger. In return, the PGA Tour is dropping all litigation against LIV for raiding its talent. And the PGA Tour will get a new name that is at least jointly approved by the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has spearheaded a massive crackdown on dissent in the kingdom, and pursued a war in Yemen that has resulted in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
Now way, way back, when the PGA Tour was still protesting LIV’s existence, its leaders claimed to be standing beside 9/11 Families United, which continues to demand, among other things, information about all the nations, especially Saudi Arabia, that helped the hijackers who flew the planes into the towers and Pentagon.
9/11 Families United’s response to the news of the PGA Tour-LIV merger is scathing. It reads in part: “Our entire 9/11 community has been betrayed by Commissioner Monahan and the PGA, as it appears their concern for our loved ones was merely window dressing in their quest for money.”
ESPN quoted an anonymous PGA Tour player who said of the day’s news, “It’s insanity. The LIV Tour was dead in the water. It wasn’t working. Now you’re throwing them a life jacket? Is the moral of the story to always take the money?”
Well, yeah. The moral reminds what Danny DeVito said in the movie Heist: “Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money.”
This announcement, I would argue, is best understood as the latest win in the Saudi kingdom’s game of sports-washing, that is using sports as a shiny bauble to legitimize authoritarian regimes, and distract from the regime’s human rights abuses.
And we got to say, it isn’t surprising that Saudi Arabia would find a willing participant in the PGA Tour: a right-wing, good-old-boy organization, steeped in a good-old-boy brand of racism, sexism, and plantation nostalgia.
Now it will happily re-embrace golfers it branded as traitors, literally, for leaving for LIV, such as Phil Mickelson, who took $200 million of Saudi money to leave the PGA Tour. At the time he took that nine-figure check, Mickelson said, and I quote, “The Saudis are scary mother bleepers to get involved with.”
Referring to Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen; who wasn’t just killed, but beheaded and dismembered with a bone saw; Mickelson said, “We know they killed Khashoggi, and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”
Now, Mickelson later apologized for these comments: not to the Khashoggi family, and not to LGBTQ people. He apologized to the Saud Royal Family.
The PGA Tour’s lack of human rights principles should surprise only the most naive among us. This is an organization that of course had a soft spot for Donald Trump. But then, of course, Trump also threw his lot in with the LIV Tour as part of his greasy charm offensive towards the Saudi Royal Family.
Part of the price for getting close to the family was ignoring the murder of Khashoggi. And in return, LIV sent several tournaments to Trump-owned clubs. And a Saudi sovereign wealth fund, led by the crown prince, invested 2 billion in Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s new private equity firm just six months after Trump left office. Disgusting.
What’s particularly depressing about this episode is that last year Trump presciently, it must be said, mocked to the golfers who stayed with the PGA Tour and got on their high horses about Saudi human rights abuses. I want to read Trump’s words, painful though it may be.
He wrote on Truth Social, his idiotic social media page, “All those golfers who remain loyal to the very disloyal PGA in all its different forms will pay a big price when the inevitable merger with LIV comes, and you get nothing but a big thank you from PGA officials who are making millions of dollars a year. If you don’t take the money now, you’ll get nothing after the merger takes place, and only say how smart the original signees were.”
Now, that unnamed PGA Tour player we quoted earlier … who asked whether the moral of this story is to always just take the money … In Trump’s view, clearly that answer is “Yes.” Only suckers look past the money to focus on the blood on the floor.
That thinking has now won the day among the PGA Tour brass. These are the politics of golf, writ clear and writ large. Authoritarian, angered at the thought of social responsibility, hostile to progress, and always looking for some big whale to suck up to, with no regard to nationality or body count.
Shame on any of us who thought this could have ended up in any way other than the Saudi Arabian Royal Family gobbling up professional men’s golf, while the ham-faced PGA Tour fat cats look away from Saudi atrocities, and count the cash. Unreal, except all too real.
Now we have Dr. Maria Veri; so thrilled to have her on the show for our segment, Ask a Sports Scholar. She’s the co-author along with Dr. Rita Liberti of Gridiron Gourmet: Gender and Food and the Football Tailgate. Dr. Veri, how are you?
Maria Veri:
I’m good, Dave. Thanks for having me.
Dave Zirin:
What an incredibly enticing and mouth-watering title. Can you explain this book to our viewers, please?
Maria Veri:
Oh, wow. Sure. We decided we wanted to learn more about the spectacle that is tailgating. And in that spectacle, we wanted to understand how gender plays out, and especially masculinity.
We have mostly men who are cooking, who are shopping for food, and that’s counter to the typical stereotype and historical understandings of food and cooking labor. But it happens all under the cover of the football stadium, right? So it’s okay. So we wanted to explore all of those dynamics.
Dave Zirin:
Did either you or Dr. Liberti have an aha moment where you said, “We need to write about tailgating,” or “I need to write about this guy cooking something on the radiator of his car”? What was your aha moment?
Maria Veri:
I think it started with Guy Fieri’s show on The Food Network: Tailgate Warriors. We read about it, and we went to a taping of one of the episodes at the Oakland Coliseum when the Raiders were still playing in Oakland. And it was fascinating to watch this made-for-TV cooking competition come to life.
And while we were there to observe that, we also took time to walk around the parking lot and see what the other tailgaters were doing. This is a preseason game, mind you. And we have one group who had a fully roasted pig going on a rotisserie. They had gotten there, if not the night before, at the crack of dawn that day.
And we thought, “This is some kind of commitment to lay all that out and put all that labor into it.” So we wanted to know more. Because within that aha moment was also a, “Oh wow, this is so much more spectacle than we even thought,” and we thought we knew.
Dave Zirin:
Following your argument here, Dr. Veri, what I’m hearing is that football provides almost a cover for men, for heterosexual men to practice the art of cooking in a way that maybe they feel like they can’t in other spheres. Am I following that correctly?
Maria Veri:
Yeah, I think so. That culinary cover makes it okay for them to be cooking. They’re under the shadow of the football stadium, on the blacktop, outdoors, over fire grills.
Traditionally, historically, cooking and food labor have been considered women’s work, non-professionalized women’s work. Women are caretaking, cooking for the family, for their husbands in this, again, heteronormative context on a daily basis.
And if men are doing the cooking there, it’s either special occasion; Dad makes breakfast pancakes on the weekend, or it’s when Dad is outdoors barbecuing. That becomes his world: outdoor over fire. Some of those masculine signifiers of cooking; throw in red meat, and then you’ve got the more complete picture.
So that is happening at the football stadium, yet there’s more to it. It’s more nuanced than that, because men are also taking responsibility for the menu creation, for creating the shopping list, for doing the shopping. And they’re planning a week ahead of time their menus and the logistics of their cooking setup on the blacktop.
They’re also looking a whole season ahead sometimes to thinking about what they’re going to be creating for the eight home games of the next season. Are their menus going to have a theme? Are they going to try out a different dish at that point?
Dave Zirin:
Well, what does tailgating tell us about America?
Maria Veri:
Oh, wow.
Dave Zirin:
I ask that because I don’t think it exists in other countries in the same way.
Maria Veri:
No, it doesn’t. And yeah, that’s a good point. Because when I talk to people in other countries, they usually need an explanation for folks who have come to the US from different places.
Yeah, it is certainly uniquely American, from what we’ve found. It certainly tells us how deeply entrenched sport is in our culture, how pervasive of a cultural practice it is. And how, when it has that kind of popularity, it also becomes the focal point around which other social festivities happen. It is a way to also, I think, extend the celebration of sport and the opportunities to spectate, and maybe even have an escape from daily life.
It also indicates … I don’t know … It tells us that there are still gender flexes perhaps in the US; that football has a lot to do with our understandings of gender, and in particular, masculinity. And so we see that thread that runs from the gridiron out to the blacktop. It’s a performance.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. That’s a great point. And it’s maybe not so much in our circles, but gender flexing is still so much a part of the United States. And we’re probably in inning one of trying to change that more broadly to something, what I would argue, would be less toxic.
Maria Veri:
Yes.
Dave Zirin:
Look, I got to tell you, the thing I loved, loved, loved about your book, Gridiron Gourmet, is that it wasn’t just you and Dr. Liberti, you and Rita sitting and coming up with these ideas in a vacuum. You were out there talking to people who are tailgating.
Maria Veri:
Yes.
Dave Zirin:
It’s so interesting, that kind of field work. It’s also very macho terrain. You are two women coming from a college campus-type environment.
Maria Veri:
Yeah, that’s right.
Dave Zirin:
How difficult was it to make those connections and get people to talk? Or maybe it wasn’t difficult at all.
Maria Veri:
I have to say it wasn’t too difficult. We were struck by the generosity of a number of the tailgaters we spoke to. And I think here, a distinction is important that you can go to the blacktop of any professional and most big-time college football games for tailgating, and you can easily find the groups that are just there for the drinking before they go into the game. They just want to get amped up and socialize and hang out, and they’re boisterous.
There’s a lot of toxicity often in those groups, and they’re not so much concerned about the food. It’s like, okay, maybe some hot dogs, bag of chips. Those weren’t the folks we were interested in talking to.
We wanted to find the folks who were seemingly being thoughtful about the food that they were eating and in cooking. That was usually a different section of the blacktop.
For them, I would say maybe the biggest challenge was just breaking into their constrained time allotment, as they were trying to prepare things before they had to not only eat them themselves, but sometimes feed 20 to 30 people; and then pack up to go in to watch the game. Because the fans we talked to were very much into being able to watch the game.
Dave Zirin:
What was the most interesting thing you saw cooked? And did any of these folks feed you? That’s my last question.
Maria Veri:
Oh, they did. Well, I can tell you about some of the groups that we encountered. In San Francisco; Santa Clara, technically with the 49ers; there’s one tailgate group called the 3rdRail9ers. These guys come in and they set up what looks like a professional catering situation in their section of the blacktop.
They’ve got a smoker, they’ve got a grill, they’ve got a hot table. They’re doing smoked chicken, they’re doing bacon-infused mac and cheese, sesame chicken, grilled tri tip; I mean, there aren’t too many restaurant meals I’ve had that were better what they very generously offered us. And that was pretty common. We’d walk around; that group in particular really stood out for us.
Rita was able to visit LSU before a Saturday football game, and she met the Black Pot Mafia Tailgating Group. So we have this very communal groups that the men who are part of them strongly identify with. Then that group is in turn strongly identified with the team they’re following.
And they had varieties of gumbo going, a 40-gallon gumbo pot. She saw groups there also doing the full-on alligator.
Dave Zirin:
Wow.
Maria Veri:
We see a lot of regional representation as well in tailgating.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. How many books are this incisive about gender, about race, which you deal with in the book? About the question of heteronormativity? Yet at the same time really makes me hungry.
Maria Veri:
Yeah, right.
Dave Zirin:
It’s a very potent combination.
Maria Veri:
Thank you.
Dave Zirin:
Very last question. I think everybody should read Gridiron Gourmet. But what’s a book you’ve read recently that you want to recommend?
Maria Veri:
Oh gosh. Let me think. I’ve been reading more fiction lately, and this is pretty far afield from what we’re talking about.
Dave Zirin:
That’s fine.
Maria Veri:
There’s a tiny thread, though. Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel.
Dave Zirin:
Oh.
Maria Veri:
Human Copperhead. She’s exploring what’s been happening in Appalachia, and how Big Pharma has really exploited that group of people, with getting so many addicted on opioids.
And the main character, at one point in his life, is a high school football star until his knee is blown out in a game. And then you can imagine what ensues, giving the topic, the subject of the book. So that was really powerful.
Dave Zirin:
Wow.
Maria Veri:
I enjoyed that. Yeah.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. Someday the Sackler family will be beneath hell, looking up and waving.
Maria Veri:
Right.
Dave Zirin:
Dr. Veri, I thank you so much for joining us on our segment, Ask a Sports Scholar.
Maria Veri:
Dave, it’s my pleasure. Thank you.
Dave Zirin:
Well, that’s all the time we have for this week. Thank you, Dr. John Carlos. Thank you, Dr. Maria Veri. For The Real News Network, I’m Dave Zirin. You stay frosty out there. We are out of here. Peace.
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